Know your Trojan coach: Neal Brown

TROY - Neal Brown made some waves when, at 27, he was named offensive coordinator at Troy University, making him the youngest in Division I-A (he’s now 28). His offense, a variation of former coordinator Tony Franklin’s spread, made waves as it finished first in the Sun Belt in scoring offense and in the top 3 in many other categories. The Trojans are 22nd nationally in scoring offense and 26th in total offense.

Brown, who previously coached way up north at Sacred Heart, Massachusetts and Delaware, spent time with the Dothan Eagle for an interview prior to the Arkansas State game. He played three seasons at Kentucky and his final year at UMass.

How did you get to Troy?
Coach Franklin got hired by Coach (Larry) Blakeney in December right around Christmas if I remember right. Obviously I kept in touch with him having played for him in Kentucky and through an arena team.
In February, (Ricky) Logo left and went to Vanderbilt. (Brian) Turner moved over to defense. There was an opening and that’s when Coach Blakeney hired me.

What role did you play in current Baltimore Ravens rookie quarterback Joe Flacco’s success at Delaware?
None. Pittsburgh didn’t release him, which didn’t make sense because he went to a Division I-AA school. He had to sit out, and the year he sat out was the year I was there.

What got you into coaching?
My dad and grandfather were both coaches. My uncle was a coach. I grew up with it. I graduated in December from UMass and really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I went home and played for Tony’s arena team. Coach (Mark) Whipple, who is now with the Eagles, called me and said he had a graduate assistant job. I went and I liked it, so here I am now.

Is it better coaching in the south?
The weather’s definitely better. I was lucky because I worked for some good guys. That’s one thing that I’ve been real fortunate with is that I’ve been around a lot of good people. At Kentucky, Tony’s a connection that paid off. Hal Mumme’s one of the best offensive minds out there. Chris Hatcher, who’s now the head coach at Georgia Southern, was there. Mike Leach was my position coach and he’s now the head coach at Texas Tech.

I played and coached under Mark Whipple. He won a championship at UMass, was the quarterback coach for (Ben) Roethlisberger with the Steelers and now he’s with the Eagles.

At Delaware, I went to a staff with a bunch of people that had won a championship, then I come here. I’ve been lucky because I’m not that old but I’ve been around a bunch of good guys.

Is it weird being the coordinator where the other offensive assistants are older than you?
I’ve never really thought about it. You’d have to ask them more so than me. The basic scheme is what Tony brought. Obviously we’re doing some stuff a little different. How we set up our day is a little different, but we’ve been in this offense for three years now so we’re all used to it.

Most memorable coaching moment?
The most positive coaching moment would have to be the Middle Tennessee game in 06. It was an unbelievable way we came back. I use that word unbelievable, but the adversity we had to go through to win it. The thing that sticks out to me was the plays our kids made to win it in the last five minutes.
People say “oh you’re lucky,” but I don’t think it was that. We were down inside the 10-yard line and didn’t get it on fourth and an inch. We got that field position (forced a punt) and took it and scored our first touchdown.
Our kids made some great plays down the stretch.

Most embarrassing coaching moment?
In recruiting I get mistaken all the time for players. Besides the young-looking jokes, I was at Delaware and this didn’t happen during a game, but we had a team meeting and the special teams would meet and we’d have an offensive walkthrough.
I didn’t have any special teams responsibilities. During that special teams meeting, I was doing a test for our receivers. Nobody told me that special teams weren’t meeting that day, so I missed the walkthrough.
It was funny. They tried to make it a big deal, but it wasn’t.

We got a delay of game against ULL inside the 5 (this year).
We had a play checked where we call an alert play. The sideline’s looking over and I thought I told the signalers to run it, but I don’t know if I didn’t tell them or if the headset went out.
I’m thinking about the next play we’re going to run and the clock expires and we get a penalty.

Most heartbreaking coaching moment?
There’s three games that stick out from a coaching deal. The first was when I was a G.A. at UMass. We were 10-1 and we go in the first round of the playoffs at Colgate. It becomes a blizzard like you’ve never seen. It was on Sports Illustrated and all that. We end up losing to a team that we thought we were better than and we thought we had a team to win a national championship.

The second one is the FAU game last year. We didn’t play very well but we put ourselves in position. We had first and 10 at the 32 with two minutes to go and I thought we were going to win, but we didn’t.

The third one was LSU. That one goes from being your most memorable and most heartbreaking because from a coaching staff and player perspective, we did a great job putting ourselves in that position but for it to all fall apart in the fourth quarter was heartbreaking.

Future goals?

Beat Arkansas State. I take it as it comes. I’m really happy where I’m at right now. Everybody that gets in wants to be a head coach. At some point I’d like to take my turn and see how I do, but I like the job I’ve got.